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Proposal for human language teaching web application
January 20, 2010 - 3:16pm — Timothy Normand...
I have an idea for an open source web site/application that people can use to learn human languages. I was wondering if anyone in the club would find it interesting to work on. I know plenty of Linguistics, so mostly what I need is help with the web programming.
Here's a draft design doc:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Aavu_nMOlv7NZDNzZmIyc182Z2o3dHFzZGs&hl=en
Timothy Normand Miller
millerti [at] cse [dot] ohio-state [dot] edu
http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti
Proposal for human language teaching web application
This would be a great project for a "software engineering" class.
Maybe some prof in a computer science department could have his
students work on this.
Proposal for human language teaching web application
This is a great idea - so much so, that it's very similar to how
Rosetta Stone works :) The crowdsourcing bit is interesting though,
and your idea also reminds me a bit of picture dictionaries
(Bildwoerterbucher in German), where it will have something like a
sheet of music and label every symbol / item on the page with its
English/German translation.
Proposal for human language teaching web application
I love it. I can do (some) Spanish and Swedish.
Proposal for human language teaching web application
On Jan 20, 2010, at 4:19 PM, Peter Dietz wrote:
> I love it. I can do (some) Spanish and Swedish.
>
> For CSE 494 c#, I built a flashcard program and it was actually really fun. I will admit that Rosetta is where I drew my inspiration, but I am surprised that they haven't yet launched a web app equivalent.
Well, at $350 a pop, Rosetta Stone makes good money selling boxed applications. It's also expensive to hire psychologists, linguistics, and native speakers of a dozen languages. It wouldn't be profitable for them to make cheaper versions or web versions. On the other hand, taking a very distributed FOSS approach could give us the ability to develop it for free and offer it for free. All we have to pay for is the ISP; if we can get donations and sell ads, we might manage it.
>
> There could be some inter-departmental buy-in, as I'm sure all the foreign languages would be interested to contribute.
Yes. The reason I haven't talked with anyone in Linguistics or foreign language about it yet is that I'd like to build some proof-of-concept implementation, so it's more than just an idea and vaporware. It's not like lots of people haven't thought about developing language tutors. But how many have actually gotten organized enough to DO it? Through the Open Graphics Project, I have contacts all over the world. I just need to leverage that correctly.
>
>
Beautiful! So, the idea is to do basically this, with the ability and scalability to approach the sophistication of things like Rosetta Stone (yes, I was thinking of that when I wrote the doc) and Transparent Language.
BTW, I've added some stuff to the doc. Doing the HTML interface for showing pictures isn't hard, especially since really it should be very unadorned to keep from being distracting. Keeping user info and the educational content in a database isn't hard either. A little more work will let us keep images and audio files organized. I've started making a list of the software components necessary for this. This includes dedicated applets to do audio (Java or Flash).
Proposal for human language teaching web application
I hate to be a corporate shill, but have you taken a look at Silverlight for your media player? http://smf.codeplex.com/ has a complete media playback library for audio/video (if you add my patch from http://is.gd/6Hqn2 that is), and is much more programmer-friendly IMHO than Flash - you can write in a sane language (C#) and still interface with the DOM / Javascript.
*And*, you don't have to buy Flash to compile Silverlight, you can write your code in Notepad and compile from any Windows / Linux box using "msbuild SomeProject.sln" (PS: this applies to the desktop / web too - every Windows machine ships with *2* compilers in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\", bet you didn't know that!)
Proposal for human language teaching web application
How compatible is it with Moonlight? Last I tried, I couldn't get Silverlight stuff to work because I didn't have "Silverlight 2.0" in Linux. Lots of good that did me.
Proposal for human language teaching web application
Hmmm, I haven't tried it, but I know installing Moonlight is *really* easy now, you just click on a Firefox extension and it's done. I know they've finished large parts of SL2 and SL3.
Proposal for human language teaching web application
On Jan 20, 2010, at 7:21 PM, Paul Betts wrote:
> I hate to be a corporate shill, but have you taken a look at
> Silverlight for your media player? http://smf.codeplex.com/ has a
> complete media playback library for audio/video (if you add my patch
> from http://is.gd/6Hqn2 that is), and is much more programmer-friendly
> IMHO than Flash - you can write in a sane language (C#) and still
> interface with the DOM / Javascript.
I'd rather avoid flash or silverlight entirely. Unfortunately, we need something like that to do the audio (recording and playback). Thus, I want to relegate them to tiny applets that function under the direction of Javascript. In that case, I see no problem with a silverlight version. It's just a module. When the user joins up, they can select which one they want to use.
>
> *And*, you don't have to buy Flash to compile Silverlight, you can
> write your code in Notepad and compile from any Windows / Linux box
> using "msbuild SomeProject.sln" (PS: this applies to the desktop / web
> too - every Windows machine ships with *2* compilers in
> C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\", bet you didn't know
> that!)
I'm just concerned about supporting Linux users. Yes, there's moonlight. I don't know if it's a pain to get working or not.
One of these will happen first. Then the other will follow. :)
Proposal for human language teaching web application
Message from monnand
Matthew Wilson wrote:
> This would be a great project for a "software engineering" class.
> Maybe some prof in a computer science department could have his
> students work on this.
>
>
As I know, Eric Fosler-Lussier did some work about speech recognition
(for bi-linguistic learner?). I'm not quite sure
Proposal for human language teaching web application
On Jan 20, 2010, at 4:13 PM, monnand wrote:
> Matthew Wilson wrote:
>> This would be a great project for a "software engineering" class.
>> Maybe some prof in a computer science department could have his
>> students work on this.
>>
>>
> As I know, Eric Fosler-Lussier did some work about speech recognition (for bi-linguistic learner?). I'm not quite sure
Well, if he didn't, he surely knows someone in Linguistics who does. Also, although this project is more engineering and education than science, if we can use it in some way for research that leads to publication, all the better.
>> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Timothy Normand Miller
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I have an idea for an open source web site/application that people can use to learn human languages. I was wondering if anyone in the club would find it interesting to work on. I know plenty of Linguistics, so mostly what I need is help with the web programming.
>>>
>>> Here's a draft design doc:
>>>
>>> http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Aavu_nMOlv7NZDNzZmIyc182Z2o3dHFzZGs&hl=en
>>>
>>>
>>> Timothy Normand Miller
>>> millerti [at] cse [dot] ohio-state [dot] edu
>>> http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti
>>>
> By the way, I'm interested in this project and I think we are in the same lab, right Tim? We could talk about this if you have time.
I changed specialization from AI to computer architecture, so probably not. But let me know when and where, and I'll stop by and we can talk!